I really don't like killing stuff. I've eradicated varmints around the house, I used to hunt, and I regularly have to put down animals as part of my job, so I understand the need and can do it when necessary, but it always hurts a little to do it. I fish a lot and don't even enjoy killing those...a clean release is always the goal, and when that doesn't happen it always bothers me quite a bit.

Today I was driving down the road at work and saw little killdeer in the road. As I got closer it ran off the road, and I could see that it had been standing next to the body of another killdeer that had been hit and was lying dead on the centerline. After I passed, I looked in the mirror and saw it run back into the road to stand next to it's dead mate.

It was a pretty low traffic road and safe to do so, so I turned around, flipped on the flashy lights, and moved the body off the road so the other one could do its thing in peace and not get hit too.

I know we can't ascribe human emotions to animals, and for all I know the other one may have been getting ready to eat the dead one, but the way it was standing there as I approached and then frantically running back and forth was just the saddest thing I've seen all day . I'm also not sure what it says about me that I've been less emotionally affected by some dead humans than I was by that bird .

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
I'm also not sure what it says about me that I've been less emotionally affected by some dead humans than I was by that bird .

It says you're human, and humans emotions are weird sometimes.

I've experienced the death of humans a bunch of times, both professionally and personally. None of them have wrecked me as much as the loss of two of my various dogs over the years, one of them just 5 days ago.

It's different.

Animals are innocent.

Dogs specifically love unconditionally.

And grieving/dealing with death is strange in how it works and manifests.

I guess I'm like you in that regard, 92fstech. I don't hunt or even fish for that reason. I stop to move turtles, snakes, etc, off the road.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were driving back home from HEB in my pickup and took the freeway for a couple of miles. A small lizard had crawled out from the vents in front of my windshield wipers and was on the windshield, hanging on to dear life as I drove 70 mph. I was looking to get off the freeway when it crawled up the windshield then the wind blew it off. My wife and I were sad that we couldn't save it, I wished we discovered him on a suburb street instead.

Kindness toward animals is a good thing. Sometimes we can pull it off (like the OP), sometimes not (like oddball).

A young lady on my production crew came running into the work area Friday morning: “Did you see anything in the road when you came in?!”

I didn’t really know what she had in mind, so… “um, no? What did you see?”

She just about shouted at me: “A turtle!!”
And then she proceeded to tell me how she had “stopped right there,” turned on her flashers, and gotten out of her car to get the turtle out of the road.

She’s just 26, and super animated. It was fun listening to her, being so excited over having helped this turtle.

The “old man” in me kicked in, cautioning her about stopping in the road like that. (Thankfully, our building is the last one on the road, so her chance of encountering other traffic was pretty slim). But it was nice to see how excited she was about helping a critter.

Turtles are everywhere around here this time of year. We're a lake community, and just about everybody stops for them...it's almost expected that when you're driving around the lake in the spring or early summer somebody will be out of their car carrying (or dragging) a turtle off the road. There's a certain comraderie about it, and it almost restores one's faith in humanity.

And then we have "those" people. A few weeks ago some lady called the cops about a "leatherback turtle" in her neighbor's yard. She was afraid it was going to go after their children or something like that. I got there to find a sizeable softshell turtle making it's way through her neighbor's yard (a lakefront property) back to the lake. I told her to leave it alone and it would go back where it came from, and if the kids stayed on their own property and left it alone, it would t eat any of them on the way, either.

This little guy got hung up in the fence trying to follow Mom. Had to use wire cutters to free it.

Aw man....those things are cute as heck. Glad you were able to get him free. There were three of them in a field just bouncing around yesterday when I was out riding the bike after work. Scary when they run out in the road, but fun to watch otherwise.

One of the most hated aspects of my police career was the need to put down injured animals. Especially pets that people abandoned or let run loose until they get hit by cars or were otherwise injured.

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Originally posted by YooperSigs:
One of the most hated aspects of my police career was the need to put down injured animals. Especially pets that people abandoned or let run loose until they get hit by cars or were otherwise injured.

Yeah, for the most part I love loose dog calls. I get to go pet a dog, take him for a ride, and talk to the friendly people at the shelter when I drop him off. Abuse is a whole other story. For a while I was actually jealous of my buddy when he got assigned to the animal control gig, but then I realized how many abuse and neglect cases he has to deal with doing that full-time, and quickly realized I'm happy to not have that quantity of horribleness in my life.

I don't like killing stuff either.

Neighbor across the street came over one day after having been gone for a couple of weeks and asked if I could help her out with something at her house, so over I went.

A while before, she had put up a plastic mesh rabbit-protection fence around her garden. Turns out sometime while she had been gone, one of our beneficial rodent-and-cottonmouth-eating black snakes had gotten itself partway through one of the gaps in the plastic, gotten stuck, twisted and squirmed enough that the plastic wires were biting into its sides in multiple places, and now was lying there motionless.

This was in the heat of the summer, and that summer was one of those NC occasionally sees where rains are infrequent. So that beastie had been there for unknown numbers of days in the heat with no water, with its body twisted into plastic. Was not clear if it was dead or alive.

I asked her if she cared about the fence, or if it would be OK to cut it to free the snake. She said to go for it so I cut the wires connected to the ones embedded in the snake. No reaction from the snake during this process - it just lay there limp, with the plastic wires still tightly twisted into its sides. So I picked it up, put it on her picnic table and used my swiss army knife scissors to clip each of the wires and untwist them to get them out of the snake's body.

Eventually the wires were all out, but still no motion from the snake. At the time we had snake cages at the house from when the kids had some as pets, so hoping it was alive, I carried it over, put it in a cage with a dish of water and put a big towel over the cage to cover it over to give it a chance to recover calmly in case it wasn't dead.

Well, my wife is actually the snake expert. She came home a couple hours later and I told her the story. She said, 'I wonder if it's alive - let's check.' and she took the towel off.

Whang!!!!!!

Taking off the towel surprised the snake and the poor thing freaked, and tried to strike through the glass of the snake cage! My wife and I jumped. "I think it's alive." I dead-panned.

We let it sleep through the night, then in the morning my wife used her snake tongs and let it go in the side yard. I like to think its decedents are eating vermin in our yard to this day.

Found a kitten and took her home Friday.

She was in the middle of the interstate trying to get through the slots of a storm drain.

There is at least one that found a home and avoided tragedy.

quote:

I really don't like killing stuff.

You know what would be worrying.......

Seriously though, I don't think anybody should like harming another living being. Look, while I don't hunt, I sure as hell will eat it and have no issues with hunting for food, culling etc. but I do tend to have an issue with hunting for pure sport/trophy (when the animal doesn't need to be culled).

I just think part of being a good human is not wanting to see anything that had a mother hurt or killed even when necessary. Killing should never bring joy IMO.

.......accept for spiders.....kill em' all with extreme prejudice and let God sort those 8 legged bastards out, hopefully with difficulty when they are charred from a fiery death.......I don't like spiders....don't judge me. . Seriously I know, I know spiders eat the bad bugs I get it I get it.

I am an animal lover, and it bothers me to see animals get abused or die needlessly. I do hunt, and kill quite a few deer. But only what we eat, and my goal is to put an animal down with as little suffering as possible.
People? I'm getting old and hard hearted I guess. It just doesn't affect me like it used to. The kid calls still bother me, but two gang bangers shooting it out and one getting killed? I could care less.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
I know we can't ascribe human emotions to animals ....

Because they’re not human. But does that mean they don’t have emotions of their own?

I haven’t had much experience with animals of any kind, but how can anyone who has had any experience with them doubt that they connect with each other on more than a base instinctive level? I have seen several birds remain gathered around a dead one and although there’s no way for me to know what is going through whatever minds they have, there’s no question in my mind that it is something, and when I have seen it, my reaction has been much as what you described about yourself.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
I know we can't ascribe human emotions to animals ....

Because they’re not human. But does that mean they don’t have emotions of their own?

I haven’t had much experience with animals of any kind, but how can anyone who has had any experience with them doubt that they connect with each other on more than a base instinctive level? I have seen several birds remain gathered around a dead one and although there’s no way for me to know what is going through whatever minds they have, there’s no question in my mind that it is something, and when I have seen it, my reaction has been much as what you described about yourself.

I think I agree. We commonly ascribe emotions to animals that we view as more intelligent, like dogs or horses. We had to leave our dog at home this week for vacation, and you could tell he knew what was happening, and was mopey about it. So much so that I felt guilty putting him out since the back yard before we left (my 18 y/o son is staying home and watching him, so he'll be fine).

I guess I just typically have a harder time attributing those same emotions to creatures that are viewed as "less intelligent" like birds, fish, etc. Perhaps that's a mistake.

quote:

I guess I just typically have a harder time attributing those same emotions to creatures that are viewed as "less intelligent" like birds, fish, etc.

Have a friend who is an excellent Vet. Opened her own place etc. she had also done some farm vet work.

We were having drinks one night and I asked her if there were any animals she wouldn’t care for. She thought for a second and said “not really……well I don’t work or birds or lizards…because I don’t give a shit about them.” Cracks me up to this day.

I hear you. The older I get the softer my heart gets for any living thing. I am a hunter and a fisherman and have been my entire life, but taking a life feels a little different now than when I was younger. I still think ethical hunting and fishing is an amazing thing and necessary to control animal populations, but my heart strings get tugged a little more these days. I know other guys who have experienced the same evolution if you will.

To relate to your story, I can remember duck hunting (probably 30+ years ago) and dropping a mallard and seeing the mate instantly begin to start quacking nonstop while flying around looking for it. It was obviously distressed. Even as a young guy I remember going from elation at having dropped one, to "man, this kinda sucks."

I've seen enough to make me think a lot of animals mourn the loss of a mate.

Just like many of us here, I have experienced death both personally and professionally.

Working in law enforcement (even as a rookie) human death never really bothered me. I thought it might be different when I switched over and started working as a death Investigator in Charlotte. (It didn't)


Now, animals are totally different.
I can handle the crazy, high stress call outs, violent domestics, suicides, etc..

But, if my animals get sick, I lose my mind and cannot think straight.

I do not hunt, and if I do fish, I practice catch and release.

I have a whole house full of animals we rescued, and I stop and help everyone I can. Be it a mouse, coyote or snake.

It bothers me to see deer hit, squirrels run over, etc.

It doesn't help my attitude or mood when a lot of it is because Durham County lets these hood rats and illegals drag race up and down our county road. (Not mention the main roads)

I saw the same thing with a pair of mourning doves at the side of a road. One had been hit and the other was nudging it to try to make it get up. It was to this day one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen...